


The Birds and the Bees (and the Demon)

by the_original_n_chan



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anime-ish Continuity, Non-graphic Discussion of the Facts of Life, Not That Kind of Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_original_n_chan/pseuds/the_original_n_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rin has questions. Yukio has answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Birds and the Bees (and the Demon)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel to my series [The Priest's Son and the Demon](http://archiveofourown.org/series/65558), but it can be read as a stand-alone story. It's set in the anime continuity but branches off just after the forest camp arc.
> 
> The characters and story of _Blue Exorcist_ are the property of the original creators; no infringement is intended.

The rain drumming outside the dorm room’s windows made a soothing counterpoint to the low sounds of pages turning and pens scratching against paper. The scrape as Rin pushed back his chair seemed very loud in that stillness. Yukio looked up, vaguely startled and ready to be disapproving as Rin got to his feet. Rin must have sensed the imminent lecture, because he muttered “Be back in a minute” as he shambled out of the room.

Somehow Rin’s absence was more distracting than his presence. It was the lingering annoyance, Yukio thought, at the fact that his brother remained incapable of focusing on his studies for more than about fifteen minutes at a time. Yukio took the opportunity to glance over and check Rin’s progress on his essay. Rin’s meandering script filled about half the page, which actually was pretty good, considering. Slightly mollified, Yukio turned back to his lesson plan.

It took Rin substantially more than a minute to return, and when he did he wandered aimlessly across the room, not to his desk, but to his bed. Flopping onto the mattress, he rolled onto his side, facing the wall. Yukio’s irritation sparked again, and he turned in his chair to glower. Bad enough that Rin was always falling asleep sitting up—this wasn’t even making a pretense of trying. Yukio was gathering himself to start the usual harangue when Rin sighed and then murmured under his breath, “I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” Impossible—Rin was never sick, probably because of his demon heritage. His mood seemed oddly low, but Yukio was still more than half inclined to suspect malingering. Rin started almost comically at the question, his tail going bolt straight as he stiffened.

“Uh, no. No! I’m fine, ha ha...it’s nothing. Just forget it.” His voice went flat on the last words, and as he slumped once more, turning his head against the pillow, Yukio barely made out a mumbled “Shit. I said that out loud....”

Now he knew Rin was hiding something. “If something’s wrong, tell me,” he instructed. “I’m supposed to be watching over you, remember? I’d appreciate not being blindsided by whatever this is later.”

“I told you it’s nothing!” Rin snapped, bristling. Yukio was used to his brother’s outbursts; he could tell at once that this one was insincere bluster.

“If it’s nothing, then why are you yelling?”

“ _I’m not yelling! Goddamn it!_ ” Rin clenched himself into a knot, knees drawn up and arms wrapping around himself. His tail thumped hard against the bed, then whipped to curl around his huddled form. The tension in his body suggested real misery, and Yukio found his skepticism melting into genuine concern.

“Niisan....”

The silence drew out, broken only by the ceaseless rhythm of the rain. Yukio watched his brother, just waiting until the moment should pass and Rin either confessed his problem or buried it once more. At last Rin sagged in almost imperceptible surrender. “It’s just,” he said, his voice a small, strangled whisper, “it’s just that I’m horny _all the damn time_.”

Yukio’s eyebrow erupted into a spasm of twitching even as an embarrassed heat flooded into his face. “That? That’s it?” he said, incredulous. Struggling to regain a measure of poise, he shoved his glasses up violently. “Niisan, you’re a fifteen-year-old male. I _hardly_ think there’s anything out of the ordinary about that.”

“I know! But it’s been different lately. It’s like any little thing sets me off, and then I can’t stop thinking about it. Like anytime I see a pretty girl…or any girl. Or just _think_ about seeing a girl. It’s driving me crazy! And sitting next to Shiemi in her uniform—d’you have any idea how hard it is to make it through class?”

Lovely. Yet another reason for his brother to space out. It dawned on Yukio then exactly why Rin had left the room a few minutes ago, and he blanched. _Dispassion,_ he told himself firmly. He was a teacher, and he was supposed to be mentoring and training Rin. He had the maturity to cope with this. “Annoying, perhaps, but perfectly normal,” he declared authoritatively. “You should compare notes with Shima-kun sometime.”

“Hey, don’t lump me together with that dork!”

“And I’m sure it doesn’t help that you’ve been spending so much time training with Shura-san.” Yukio couldn’t keep an edge of dry sarcasm out of his voice. “She’s your type, isn’t she? ‘Hot and sexy’?”

“She’s a monster,” Rin groaned, then added in an undertone, “A monster with great breasts, but a monster.”

“Hmph.” A pity—he wouldn’t have minded being able to blame Shura. “I wish Sir Pheles would make her put on a shirt,” he grumbled, half to himself.

Rin snorted. “Doesn’t seem to distract you.”

“I’m not as light minded as you are.” Shura wasn’t the real issue, Yukio reminded himself. He reoriented himself to his lecture. “Anyway, none of this would be a problem if you would just learn to concentrate. If you want to be an exorcist, you have to stop daydreaming. You can’t let your mind be consumed by girls all the time.”

“But it’s not just girls,” Rin blurted, then froze as if in horror. There was a moment’s pause, during which he seemed to be wrestling with himself. At last he muttered, the words seemingly dragged from him against his will. “It’s guys, too.”

Yukio blinked, nonplussed. “You’re bisexual?”

Rin appeared to shrink into himself even further, if that were possible. “That ain’t normal, is it?” he whispered. “I mean, it’s kinda... _weird_.”

“It’s not all that common, but it’s still well within the range of human normalcy,” Yukio said, his voice gentling. He thought he understood at last. Those were the words that Rin wanted to hear. _Human. Normal._ “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Rin rolled over onto his stomach, finally looking at Yukio. He was still wearing the hair clip that Suguro had given him; with his bangs up out of his face he looked younger, wide eyed and guileless, and Yukio marveled yet again at how their ages so often seemed to be reversed. “You’re sure? ’Cause I feel like…it’s not _like_ me. Like I don’t know where these feelings are suddenly coming from, y’know?” He frowned down at the coverlet.

“Absolutely sure.” Yukio smiled. “People change and learn new things about themselves all their lives, sometimes surprising things. And to be honest, you still have a lot of growing up to do, Niisan. Father thought so too.”

With a grunt that was probably as much annoyance as agreement, Rin sat up. “Yukio, have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“Huh?” Yukio could feel the heat starting in his face again, and the loss of composure mortified him almost as much as the new direction of their conversation. “I don’t see how that’s relevant—”

Rin threw his pillow at Yukio; Yukio caught it reflexively, with a whump that made him glad that Rin hadn’t thrown anything more substantial. “’Fess up!” Rin growled. “I’m not gonna be the only one making embarrassing revelations around here.”

“Oh, all right.” The one benefit of wearing glasses was that it gave him something to fiddle with. Yukio took them off and peered at the lenses, as if looking for imaginary dirt specks. “No, I haven’t.”

“Is there someone you like?” Rin persisted. As Yukio sat blankly, trying to come to grips with the question, Rin added, “Shiemi likes you.”

“You’ve said that before, but I still don’t see your basis for it.” Yukio put his glasses back on, and his surroundings resolved from a blur to clarity.

“Well, what about those lunch box girls? Did you like any of them?”

“I told you—if I’d picked one of them, the others would be upset, so I wasn’t going to choose between them.”

“But did you _like_ any of them? Were you attracted to one of them?” Rin rolled his eyes. “And you think I’m dense, sheesh.”

“You _are_ dense.” Cornered, Yukio gave in. “No, I wasn’t.”

“So there isn’t anybody you think about like that? An idol singer, or an actress, or,” Rin swallowed faintly, and Yukio realized that he was trying to bring himself to ask if Yukio had an interest in men too, “or anybody?”

Yukio stared down at the pillow on his lap, his fingers spread against the plain white cotton case. No, there wasn’t. He really didn’t think about such things, and when they were forced upon him by the attentions of others, he felt only embarrassment and discomfort. _Asexual_ was a point on the continuum of human sexuality too—was it that, he wondered, with an unexpected pang at the thought, or was it just that he was so intensely focused on his work as an exorcist, on the fight against Satan, on the all-consuming need to protect Rin? Would the day come, somewhere in the unknowable future, when he might awaken to romantic love and to desire?

At last he lifted his head and smiled at his brother with just a trace of wistfulness.

“Niisan, maybe you got all the sex drive too.”

Rin stared at him as if stricken, then lowered his head, his hands clenching into fists on the edge of the mattress. Yukio felt a twinge of pain at having reminded his brother yet again of the difference between them—the terrible difference that Rin could never, ever be permitted to forget, even as he clung so desperately to the hope of still being human. After a few moments, though, Rin sighed and leaned back, relaxing his grip deliberately. “Well, at least you don’t have to deal with this shit,” he muttered, and Yukio took the brusque, awkward words for that they were: resignation, but also acceptance. Absolution. His heart eased. Abruptly Rin slanted a squinty-eyed look at him. “So then how do _you_ know what’s what. What’s normal and what’s not.”

“It’s part of the curriculum for becoming a Doctor. There are quite a few demons that take advantage of human sexuality, so it’s important to be able to identify and treat such cases.” Some of the demon-triggered mutations and paraphilias were enough to give one horrors. It might be yet another reason for his general lack of interest, Yukio thought.

Rin’s eyes went wide and sparkly, visions of large-breasted succubi no doubt dancing in his head. “Whoaaa! Maybe I should become a Doctor too, if it means I get to take Sex Ed.”

It was extremely satisfying when the thrown pillow smacked Rin right in his idiot grin. “The mere thought of you as a Doctor gives me a headache,” Yukio growled. He stood up as Rin flailed and then came up clutching the pillow to himself with both arms, his tail tuft spiky with alarm. “But you’re not even going to make it past esquire if you don’t do your homework.” Moving forward, he loomed above Rin with well-practiced teacher’s menace, and Rin quailed. “‘The Historical Development of Protective Seals.’ Get on with it.”

“Ahhh, okay, okay.” Rin slunk off the bed and back to his desk, grumbling his reluctance all the way. “Slave driver. And I don’t see what the point of knowing all this stuff is anyway.”

“One of these days you’ll thank me.” Yukio turned back to his own desk and his neglected lesson plan. A tentative peace returned to the room, not quite the same as before, broken and reformed into new patterns by their conversation, by all the thoughts spoken and unspoken. Only the rain shushed down unchanged, an unrelenting summer downpour.

After a minute or so of reflective silence, Rin said, softly, “Thanks, Four-Eyes.”

Yukio hesitated, then smiled, bending his head above his work.

“You’re welcome.”


End file.
